Seminar/Séminaire ICMN : Mardi 19 Sept 2023 – 14h00 Bibliothèque de l’ICMN, CNRS, Orléans

Stergar Janja

Assistant professor at the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Maribor

Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University
of Maribor, Smetanova 17, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia.

Title: Magnetic hyperthermia and NiCu magnetic nanoparticles

Summary:

The use of hyperthermia in the treatment of malignant tumors is as old as ancient medicine. Even
the father of medicine, Hippocrates, suggested burning the surface of tumors with the help of a hot
iron. To date, a whole range of methods have been discovered to heat the tissue and destroy tumor
cells with the increased temperature. Among them is the increasingly developing magnetic
hyperthermia. The latter is one of the methods of treating cancer that uses thermal energy to heat
cancerous tissue.
The thermal energy is generated by magnetic particles that adhere to diseased tissue and are
exposed to an alternating magnetic field. The basis of this method is that the cancerous tissue, in
which magnetic material in the form of magnetic particles or magnetic nanoparticles is implanted,
is exposed to an alternating magnetic field. The amount of thermal energy released depends on the
type of magnetic material and the parameters of the magnetic field.
Considering the potential drawbacks of other materials, our group focused on bimetallic nickel
and copper (NiCu) MNPs, which are particularly attractive and possess positive properties. NiCu
MNPs were used before in several application fields, such as in multilayered coatings, contact
solar cells, tissue engineering, and biomedical applications. NiCu MNPs are chemically stable and
biocompatible and exhibit desired magnetic properties, making them interesting for use in
biomedicine.